The president is tweeting about “The Squad” again. This one came out at 8:07am Sunday morning.
“I don’t believe the four Congresswomen are capable of loving our Country. They should apologize to America (and Israel) for the horrible (hateful) things they have said. They are destroying the Democrat Party, but are weak & insecure people who can never destroy our great Nation!”
The “four congresswomen” are freshmen Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). Obviously, none of them are men, and none of them are white either. Two of them are Muslim, one is an African-American and one is of Puerto Rican descent. They’re all American citizens. All, except Rep. Omar of Minnesota who was naturalized, were born as American citizens.
The president has decided to single them out and accuse them collectively of anti-Semitism in an obvious play to racists and religious bigots, particularly in his evangelical base. It’s such a raw and undisguised political play that it’s making Republican lawmakers uncomfortable. Prior to this latest tweet, the line was crossed at the president’s rally in North Carolina where the crowd chanted for Trump to send Rep. Omar back to where she came from, which would be war-torn Somalia.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP is doubling down in his fight with the “The Squad” this morning on Twitter, writing that he doesn’t believe the four House Democratic lawmakers are “capable of loving our Country.” Trump’s decision to reignite his verbal assault…comes a week after he tweeted the four should “go back and fix the countries they came from” and just days after he disavowed the “send her back” chants at his North Carolina rally last week that rattled GOP lawmakers. On Friday, Trump reversed himself again — calling his supporters “incredible patriots.”
…— IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE this is what Republican lawmakers who have urged Trump to tone down his rhetoric want.
I’ve developed the habit over the last couple of years of largely ignoring Trump’s tweets, hate rallies, and provocative remarks. I’d do that again here, too, except that it’s now clear that targeting these four women is going to be a key component of the president’s reelection strategy. This isn’t a passing thing.
A new CBS poll finds that 59 percent of the public disapproved of Trump’s previous attacks on “The Squad.” Yet, as we know from 2016, Trump’s strategy does not require a majority. He can win reelection without even coming close to winning the popular vote. He’s making a play for voters mainly in rural and small-town Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania while hoping to drive evangelical turnout in key states like North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona.
James Wise, the son of a rabbi, was one of the first people to write books warning of the threat posed by the Nazi Party.
Mr. Wise, the son of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, wrote “Swastika, the Nazi Terror” in 1933, and, with Pierre Van Paassen, “Nazism, the Assault on Civilization” in 1934. He later covered the Spanish Civil War for The New York Post.
He warned in 1936 that fascism could come to America. Here’s how that was reported in the February 5, 1936 edition of The Christian Century:
James Waterman Wise, Jr., in a recent address here before the liberal John Reed club said that [William Randolph] Hearst and [Father Charles] Coughlin are the two chief exponents of fascism in America. If fascism comes, he added, it will not be identified with any “shirt” movement, nor with an “insignia,” but it will probably be “wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution.”
Wise was a pretty smart guy but even he couldn’t anticipate that MAGA hat or the spectacle of fascists complaining about the treatment of Israel. Some things are too stupid to imagine.
The antisemitism that makes accusations of antisemitism in defense of antisemitism is *chef’s kiss*.
The fascism is completely revealed to all who have eyes to see. It Has Happened Here.
The same classes that supported National Socialism now support National Trumpalism. As always, the Volk who have been most screwed by plutocracy find the wrong scapegoats. The difference is that Der Fuhrer brought fascism to a highly homogeneous population, while Der Trumper is bringing it to a much more pluralist society, thus expanding the possible targets of the True Volk.
Hitler and Trump share the same basic characteristics: poorly educated, woefully unqualified demagogues. In intellectual matters, Hitler was a “dedicated reader of newspapers”, in Sebastian Haffner’s wonderfully dismissive phrase, while Trump is a dedicated watcher of “conservative” teevee.
Now that it has finally dawned on people that Der Trumper and his National Trumpalist party have no intention of making even a pretext of winning the popular vote, the Dems’ failure to stigmatize electoral college (i.e. Repub) prezes when they first arose becomes obvious, and critical. Just as the Weimar Republic (and constitution) fell to a political minority, so will ours. Of course, the American fascist movement does not actually have to overthrow our ramshackle 1789 constitution, as that document held the seeds of its own destruction.
And the useless corporate media standing on the sidelines, gravely intoning “Some Say…” bear a huge portion of the blame as well.
Excellent historical observation about Hitler coming to power on a minority vote. All Trump has to do is win Wisconsin, Florida, and Arizona, and he becomes president again, even if he loses the popular vote by substantial margin. The U.S. constitution is already broken, with more and more power accruing to the executive after 50 years of a supine, dysfunctional and discredited legislature. And Trump is laying the emotional groundwork for pogroms…first the undocumented are rounded up, then U.S. citizens of color are told that they are “incapable of loving this country.”